


the echo of your dreams

by ceserabeau



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:24:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1313131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceserabeau/pseuds/ceserabeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's my fault," Stiles tells his dad over the sound of Melissa's sobbing. "I made him go into the woods with me." </p><p>His dad pats his hand gently. His mouth says, "It's not your fault," but his eyes are heavy and accusing, and Stiles has to leave the room to puke up what's left of his lunch.</p><p>AU where Scott dies from Peter's bite</p>
            </blockquote>





	the echo of your dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Jeffrey McDaniel's poem _The Secret_ :  
> I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you  
> and ask them the questions I would ask you.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Scott and a boy named Stiles, and they were brothers. One night, they went into the forest to look for a dead body. But in the deep dark of the trees, a monster sunk its teeth into Scott’s flesh.

Flash forward three days and Scott’s heart is flat lining on the monitor and Melissa’s keening wail echoes through the brightly lit corridors.

“It’s my fault,” Stiles tells his dad over the sound of Melissa’s sobbing. “I made him go into the woods with me.”

His dad pats his hand gently. His mouth says, “It’s not your fault,” but his eyes are heavy and accusing, and Stiles has to leave the room to puke up what’s left of his lunch.

-

When he goes to sleep, Scott is lurking behind his eyelids, black dripping from every orifice, his mouth twisted in a snarl. His teeth are razor sharp.

 _Help me_ , he says, reaching out with hands smeared with dirt.

Stiles wakes with a scream trapped in his throat.

-

The funeral is on a rainy day, the graveyard full of figures in dark clothes tucked under huge black umbrellas. There’s a good turnout, including a load of kids from school because Scott is – was – everyone’s friend. But Stiles can’t bring himself to feel happy because Agent Douchebag is glaring at him and Melissa won’t even look in his direction.

He sits with his dad and Heather, and listens to the minister drone on, sad words for a sad time. His grip on their hands is too tight, their knuckles creaking beneath his fingers, but they don’t say anything, just let him cling.

After the coffin is lowered into the ground, after people begin to disappear, after his dad bundles him into the car and drives him home, Stiles crawls into bed and curls up under the cover. His dad knocks on the door with a soft, “You okay, kid?” and he calls back an affirmative.

But he’s not, not at all. He feels numb, entirely adrift without an anchor. It’s like when his mom died, but maybe worse, like he’s lost a limb, a twin.

If Scott was here, he’d know what to do, what to say to make him feel better. But Scott’s not here. Scott is dead, gone forever, and there’s no way to bring him back.

Stiles would cry himself to sleep, but he doesn’t have any tears left.

-

During the daytime he’s always exhausted, but sleep pulls him down the second his head hits the pillow. Scott is waiting for him, a figure in the dark of his dreams.

 _Scott_ , he says helplessly, _what are you doing here?_

 _Help me_ , Scott says. He looks up, and his eyes flash a bright, brilliant gold. _I need you, Stiles_.

The yellow glow is imprinted on Stiles’ retinas when he wakes.

-

If he thought the funeral was bad, school is even worse. The teachers give him pitying looks, and the kids whisper behind their hands: _I heard he saw it, I heard he did it, I heard, I heard, I heard_. All eyes are on him, everywhere he goes; but it’s like that scene in a movie, everyone moving around him, like he’s in a bubble, frozen as life goes on around him.

He makes it to fourth period before he has to excuse himself, the panic washing over his in never ending waves. He makes it as far as the next hallway before he has to lean against the wall and focus on breathing as his pulse pounds triple time in his temples.

When he looks up again, there’s a dark-haired girl in front of him. “Hi,” she says, and touches his arm gently, “Are you okay?”

Stiles stares at her in disbelief. “What do you think?” he snaps.

The girl looks apologetic. “Sorry,” she says, “I just meant – I heard what happened.” Her mouth twists in a sad smile. “I’ll leave you alone.”

Stiles surprises himself by grabbing her arm as she turns to go. “You’re the only person that’s spoken to me all day,” he tells her.

Her smile is small, but it’s genuine. “I’m Allison,” she says.

“Stiles.”

“Yeah, we have econ together.” She touches his arm again, a brush of fingers against fabric. “Look, you can tell me to fuck off if you want, but are you okay?”

“My best friend’s dead,” he says blankly, “I don’t really know how I am.”

Allison squeezes him reassuringly. “Do you mind me asking what happened?”

“We were in the woods, looking for a – god, it’s so stupid, this dead body.” There are tears pricking at his eyes again, and his heart is starting to thump again, but he keeps going. “My dad caught me and made me go home, but Scott was still there. And there was this – this wolf, or something. And it bit Scott, and he had some crazy allergic reaction to it and now –”

He breaks off with a sob, tears falling freely now, and Allison pulls him in to her, lets him burrow into her shoulder. Her hand rubs a soothing line along his back, up and down, over and over, until he feels like maybe he can breathe again. When he pulls back, there’s a wet patch in the shape of his face.

“Sorry,” he says, scrubbing at his face with his sleeve, “I barely know you and I’m crying all over you.”

“It’s okay,” Allison says, smiling down at him. “I don’t mind.”

Stiles lets himself slide down the wall until he can curl up on the floor. Allison sits down next to him, and reaches over to grasp his hand, squeezing it tight.

“Did they find what attacked him?” she asks.

Stiles shakes his head. “Not yet. They still don’t even know what it was.”

Allison frowns at him. “You just said it was a wolf.”

“That’s what Scott said it was, when they found him.” Saying Scott’s name still feels like a punch to the gut, but Allison’s comforting grip is like a balm. “There aren’t any wolves in California though.”

Allison doesn’t say anything but when Stiles looks up at her, her face is doing something funny, like she’s trying to stop herself from saying something. When she catches Stiles looking, she just smiles softly.

“Whatever it was,” she says, “They’ll catch it. I’m sure of that.”

-

Stiles shuts his eyes and when he opens them again, Scott’s right in front of him, close enough to touch.

 _Help me_ , he says.

 _I don’t know what you want me to do_ , Stiles tells him.

Scott looks off into the distance, and that’s when Stiles notices his ears. They’re long and pointy, animalistic, and definitely not human.

 _What’s happening to you?_  he asks.

Scott turns back to look at him and his face is changing too, eyebrows changing shape, hair growing.

 _You know what,_ he says, and Stiles wakes with a jolt.

-

Melissa actually opens the door when he knocks. There’s a pie warming his hands, and he holds it out as offering, with the hope that maybe, just maybe she’ll let him in. To his surprise, she smiles and steps back to let him pass.

“If you’re going to say sorry, I don’t want to hear it,” she says as they walk to the kitchen.

Stiles nearly drops the dish in shock. “But it _is_ my fault,” he says.

Melissa takes the pie and puts it on the counter, then pulls him into a hug. God, Stiles has missed this; all he’s wanted for days is a hug from his other mom.

“It’s not your fault,” she whispers into his hair. “Scott made his own choice to go with you. It could just as easily have been you.”

Stiles chokes on a sob. “I’m still sorry,” he says into her shirt.

“I know,” and Melissa’s crying into his hair too. “And I’m sorry too. I just – I wanted someone to blame. But it shouldn’t have been you.”

They stay like that for a long time, wrapped around each other under the familiar bright lights of the kitchen until both their breathing has evened out. Eventually Melissa pulls back, tilts his face up with soft hands.

“You want to stay for dinner?” she asks with a small smile and Stiles nods. “Good. People keep bringing me food. I don’t know how I’m going to eat it all.”

-

He shuts his eyes and Scott is there.

 _Help me_ , he says, as always.

 _You have to tell me how_ , Stiles tells him, _I don’t know what I’m looking for_.

Scott’s eyes flash in the darkness and when he reaches out, his hands are claws. _This_ , he says, and swings them at Stiles.

There are four long gouges across his chest when he wakes.

-

“I think I’m going crazy,” he says to Allison.

She pats his arm softly. “It’s only been a month,” she says.

They’re lying on her bed doing homework, Stiles trying to figure out if he’s made enough notes to put together an essay on Cold War foreign policy. Downstairs, Allison’s mom is cooking them dinner, and the smell of it wafts in to them through the open door. It would be totally normal, except that Stiles’ best friend is still dead and he feels like he’s drowning every time he thinks about it.

“I dream of him every night,” he tells her. “It’s like he’s haunting me.”

Allison nudges him with her foot. “You went through something really traumatic. It’s not going to just go away.”

Stiles huffs and flops back against the pillows. “I know. I just wish I could figure out what my brain’s trying to tell me.”

Allison shrugs at him and highlights her book with fluorescent yellow. “Are the police any closer?” she asks.

“No,” he says. His dad’s been keeping him updated, but they haven’t found it yet, whatever _it_ is.

“Look, I don’t want to stick my nose in or anything,” Allison says, except from the tone of her voice, she’s about to do just that, “but my dad has these guns for a reason.”

Stiles frowns at her. “What do you mean?”

“He’s a hunter,” Allison says, and swipes yellow across the page. “So, if your dad needs any help, we’re here.”

Stiles watches her for a moment. “Thank you,” he says, and finds that he actually means it. He would probably be a wreck without her to hold his hand all the time.

Allison just smiles at him, and goes back to her work.

-

In the depths of his dreams the only light is the moon, a great orb of silver hanging high above him. It lights nothing except Scott’s body where he’s crouched in the dark.

 _Help me_ , he says again.

Stiles reaches out for him, but he’s too far away. _I’m trying, Scotty_ , he tells him, _I just don’t know what you’re trying to tell me_.

Scott starts to rise from his crouch. His body is shifting, bones cracking loudly in the silence, and his shadow along with it. It starts as Scott’s familiar form, but it stretches and grows, expanding and moving.

 _Can you see it?_ Scott asks.

 _Yeah_ , Stiles breathes and he can, he can see it, the shadow of a wolf clawing across the ground.

-

Someone else gets attacked and Stiles goes straight to Allison’s house.

“Will you help me catch it?” he asks as soon as she opens the door.

She gives him a sceptical look. “The police are doing their job, Stiles. We shouldn’t interfere.”

He rolls his eyes. “Look, I’m going no matter what you say,” he tells her. “But I’d like some backup.”

She’s wavering, he can tell, so he puts on his best puppy dog look. Finally she sighs. “Okay,” she says, “But you need a weapon first.”

She disappears into the house and comes back with a gun, smooth and sleek. It’s cold in his hand when she passes it over, a heady weight that he grips tight. Allison herself has a bow in one hand, a black creature with a silver string, and her car keys in the other.

“Let’s go,” she says.

In the preserve, the moon casts silver shadows on the ground. The trees are long, twisted shapes reaching up to the sky. They cut through the trees, following the dips and troughs of the land, Allison tracking invisible creatures through the leaf litter.

“My dad taught me to hunt,” she says, as she points out a set of large paw prints in the dirt. “He’s a lot better than me though.”

“You seem pretty good at it,” Stiles says, as she leads them over the crest of the next hill.

They keep going, on and on, until the air grows chilly and midnight ticks past, then one o’clock. Allison leads them through the woods, into the deep dark, until they finally pause in a clearing where the moonlight shines down on them from the starry sky.

“The tracks stop here,” she says, frowning down at the ground.

It’s quiet, but out of the corner of his eyes, Stiles can see a shape moving in the trees, something low and animal creeping in the shadows.

“Allison,” he says, low and soft.

She turns sharply on her heel and follows the line of his finger. He hears the way her breath catches in her throat.

“Stiles,” she whispers, “Get behind me.”

He tries to, moving slowly, but a branch cracks beneath his foot and the creature twists towards them. It strides forward through the undergrowth until the moonlight illuminates it and Stiles can see it’s a wolf, a giant wolf, a true monster of a beast. His breath leaves his lungs in a rush, and the beast tilts its head back and howls.

The noise shakes the forest, makes the ground tremble and the trees shake. Allison draws back her bow and Stiles slides the gun from the back of his jeans. The sight of the weapons makes the beast growl, low and rumbling, and it stalks towards them, paws making shushing sounds in the leaves.

Stiles clicks the safety off the gun and raises it, but the beast has already started loping towards them, and it slashes at him with long claws. The gun goes flying and Stiles falls back, hands slipping in the dirt.

Allison looses her arrow, and it hits the beast in the meat of its shoulder. It rears up, distracted, and it looks almost human up on two legs. Stiles begins to scrabble across the ground, hands seeking the gun, as the beast circles round to Allison. She nocks another arrow, and draws once more, and the beast roars.

The arrow flies true and the beast howls when it strikes its neck. It leaps at her, but Stiles has reached the gun again and raises it in time to squeeze the trigger as the beast pounces. The gun goes off, deafeningly loud – once, twice, three times, over and over until the beast crashes to the ground and the gun clicks empty.

He’s shaking, twitching, finger still squeezing the trigger uselessly and the air smells like sweat and gunpowder and blood. The beast is dead, must be, but it’s still moving, its body twisting and bucking. It looks like – it looks like it’s shrinking, fur receding until skin begins to show through. As he watches, the wolf is becoming a man, naked and bloody and definitely dead.

"What the _fuck_?"

Allison appears in his line of sight. “Stiles,” she says, hands clutching at his shoulders, “Stiles, come on, get up.”

“What is that?” he says, unable to tear his eyes from the body of the man, the wolf-man, the _werewolf_ he just _shot_ , oh god. “I need to call my dad,” he says, willing away the taste of sick in the back of his throat.

Allison takes his phone from his shaking hand. “No,” she says calmly, “I’m calling _my_ dad.”

Stiles blinks at her. “What the hell is your dad going to do?”

“He’s going to help us with the body,” she says matter-of-factly, and dials.

It’s not long before Allison’s dad shows up. He’s a scary man, but he gives Stiles a hug when he appears in the clearing with several burly guys and bags of equipment. He presses a soft kiss to Allison’s forehead as the guys surround the body and begin to wrap it in tarpaulin.

“What are you doing?” Stiles shouts at them, “This is a crime scene!”

The guys ignore him, and he can feel a panic attack coming on, the familiar buzzing in his head and hitching of his breath. He shot a man, he _killed_ a man, he’s going to jail, his dad is going to have to arrest him and –

“Stiles, breathe with me,” Allison says, and puts her hands on his face, presses her forehead to his. She makes him follow the steady inhale-exhale of her breathing until the panic begins to subside and his heartbeat slows.

Allison’s dad puts a comforting hand on his shoulders. “There’re some things I need to tell you, Stiles,” he says, “And they might be hard to hear. But I need you to listen to me carefully, okay?”

Stiles goes to shake his head, but Allison just puts her hands on his shoulders and squeezes tight, a comforting gesture. It makes the panic threatening to consume him fade to nothing, so eventually he nods his agreement.

“Okay then,” Allison’s dad says with a small smile, “What do you know about werewolves?”

-

Sleep wraps itself around him and he sinks into the black. Scott looks normal tonight and he opens his mouth to speak, but Stiles beats him too it: _help you, I know_.

Scott grins at him, all teeth, and laughs. _I don’t need help any more_ , he says.

Stiles tilts his head at him, confused. _What do you mean?_

Scott reaches out, and his hand is solid and firm when it touches Stiles’ shoulder. _You figured it out_ , he says gently, and smiles, _I knew you would_.

 _What are you talking about?_ Stiles asks him.

Scott presses his hands to Stiles’ face, and it feels so real, _he_ feels so real. _You’re the one who always figures it out_ , he says. Y _ou’re the smart one, Stiles_.

 _I’m not_ , Stiles tells him. _God, Scott, I’m not. I got you killed_ –

Scott clamps a hand over his mouth. _No_ , he says softly, _you didn’t. You saved me. Just like you always save people._

Stiles chokes on a sob, and Scott just gathers him into his arms and holds him for a long time. It’s all too soon before Scott starts to pull away though, and Stiles grabs at him but his hands clutch at empty air.

 _Don’t_ , he whimpers.

Scott just smiles at him. _I love you_ , he says, and fades into the black.

When Stiles wakes, his face is wet with tears. Allison rolls over in the bed and slides her hand between his.

“Okay?” she asks, soft in the silence of the dawn.

Stiles nods at her. There’s still the ever-present weight on his chest, but for the first time since he heard Scott’s scream echoing through the depths of the forest, the darkness around his heart seems to be lighter.

He breathes easily, and lets sleep pull him down again.


End file.
